


The Closer I am to Fine

by partyghost (Arokel)



Series: The Duality of Alex [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: A whole buncha 90s-era queer hangups, And Gay Disaster Alex, Bisexual Julie Molina, Coming Out, Gen, I wrote this for me but you can read it if you want to, Mentions of homophobia, No beta we die like Sunset Curve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/partyghost
Summary: Alex has a positive coming-out experience.
Relationships: Alex & Julie Molina
Series: The Duality of Alex [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031028
Comments: 13
Kudos: 197





	The Closer I am to Fine

**Author's Note:**

> aka "the one where Alex can't shake the 90s"

“So that’s the bridge. And Alex I was thinking – sorry, is this a bad time?”

Everyone stops to look at Julie. Alex, who has been nodding along at appropriate intervals, starts guiltily. “What? No. Where are we? Sorry.”

He looks genuinely contrite, like he really hadn’t noticed he was zoning out. It’s almost impossible to be angry at Alex for too long. And he’s generally pretty attentive; it’s only when his anxiety-brain gets the better of him that he loses focus.

Julie crosses her arms and rolls her eyes, fighting the fond smile quirking at her mouth. “Uh-huh. Good to know you’ve been paying attention.”

“ _We’re_ listening, even if Alex has better things to do,” Luke says, nudging Julie’s shoulder with his. He does that a lot, which is something Julie has decided to shove into a corner of her mind and not look at.

“It’s not your fault,” Reggie adds, just a little too on-the-nose to be kind, like always. “If it doesn’t start with W and have beautiful, flowing helmet hair, Alex isn’t interested.”

Well, huh. That’s definitely not what she expected it to be. Alex is pining over someone? Poor guy. But she guesses that if anyone was going to fall hopelessly for a human they couldn’t ever touch, it would be Alex. Or at least she hopes it would be Alex. If it’s Luke, that creates… complications she can’t let herself fantasize about.

Julie raises her eyebrows and waits for someone to elaborate.

“Alex met a hot skateboarder and now he’s in love,” Luke supplies, punching Alex on the shoulder and ignoring his ‘I’m _not_ ’ to grin at Julie.

 _That_ is worth an eyebrow-raise. “Wait – met, as in talked to? You guys met another ghost? When? And how?”

She’s not surprised when Luke opens his mouth to answer first, but it is weird that he shuts it immediately when Alex elbows him in the side. But maybe Alex wants to be the one to tell the story, since he’s so obsessed. There’s always _some_ sort of weird rivalry going on with these guys at any given moment.

But it’s Reggie who answers, not Alex. “Well, after he nearly ran Alex down with a skateboard –“

Alex disappears.

“Shit,” Luke says, and then, to Reggie, “you’re a fucking idiot.”

* * *

Julie still hasn’t figured it out. She’s been trying all night to think through what could have upset Alex so badly that he left without a word, to the point where she barely made a dent in her homework. In the end, she just gave in and got ready for bed. It’s just calculus; she’ll do it during first period.

Alex is just like that sometimes. She hasn’t figured out all of his anxiety triggers yet and it’s not the first time he’s been so overwhelmed he has to leave for a few hours and clear his head. That’s not weird. What’s weird is that Reggie, who normally looks a little bewildered any time he says something tone-deaf to prompt that sort of response from Luke, just looked pale instead. And Luke, who tends to roll his eyes and make some quip about Alex being _sensitive_ or Reggie being _in_ sensitive, looked… scared. It doesn’t make sense.

It’s late, nearly midnight, when the knock finally comes at her bedroom door. She’s just turned out her bedside lamp – maybe whoever is knocking was waiting for that. Kind of weird, but okay.

“Uh, come in?”

Alex steps into the room.

Julie sits up in bed. She can barely see him in the dim light of the streetlamp shining through her curtains, but what she _can_ see of him looks very small and very scared.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi.”

He runs a hand through his hair and back around to his neck, rubbing awkwardly in a gesture she didn’t think people even did in real life. It’s almost like he’s trying to make himself as small and nonthreatening as possible. What the hell?

“So. I guess you heard what Reggie said.”

About the skateboarder? That’s why he left? Well, okay. Julie can navigate that. “Yeah.”

Alex sighs a shaky breath. “And that’s… fine?”

“Yeah?”

Maybe she should be handling this more sensitively, but it’s really not that big of a deal. It’s not like she didn’t know; no straight guy from the 1990s wears that much pink.

Oh. The 1990s. Right.

She’s about to speak up again and say sorry, she forgot, it’s just that it’s 2020 now and gay marriage has been legal in California since she was eight, but Alex beats her to it.

“It’s just… I don’t really… we just showed up here, you know, and it’s clear that lots of things are different, but I don’t know _how_ – I mean, when I was alive it wasn’t something I really ever –“

Jeez. Okay. That’s… really sad, actually, that he’s been in the present for weeks and hasn’t had the courage to ask if things are better now, that he was so terrified of being found out that he couldn’t even bring it up casually. It’s probably better to pretend she didn’t have any idea. “Are you trying to come out to me right now?”

Alex looks kind of offended, which is maybe fair. That didn’t sound as supportive as she meant it to. “What else would I be – I mean, you know now, so I shouldn’t even have to – I just had to see what you’d say.”

He’s _terrified._

“I kind of don’t know, though,” Julie points out. There were definitely bi people in the 90s, she’s almost positive; Alex is just so convinced she can see right through him that he’s not thinking straight. “All I know is some cute guy hit you with a skateboard. That doesn’t tell me anything about you.”

“When I was alive it would.”

Julie huffs out a frustrated breath. She is _trying_ to be supportive and give him space to speak, doing her best not to spook him any more than he’s already been spooked, but he’s not helping. “Yeah, well, I _wasn’t_ alive then, so you’re gonna have to be more specific.”

Alex can see she’s frustrated, and she feels guilty. He _is_ sensitive, no matter how often or how hotly he denies it, and she knows he’ll take that frustration to heart, even if she didn’t mean it.

“Sorry,” he says, jerky and apologetic. “I’ll just – you were going to sleep. I should – I’ll just go.”

“No, Alex, wait.” She sees him halt halfway through the door, shoulders hunched in on himself in disappointment and self-recrimination. “This is more important than sleep.”

“Your dad would disagree,” he says, muffled through the door, but he pulls back until his whole body is in the room again. Not facing her, but present.

Just for one night, Julie thinks, she can relax her ‘stay off my bed’ rule. Just for this.

She pushes the covers off and slides her legs over the edge of the bed, patting the space beside her. “My dad would say nothing is more important than helping a friend who needs it.”

Alex smiles crookedly at her, teeth flashing bright in the dark. His footsteps toward her are quiet, cautious, like a stray animal longing for rescue but terrified to accept it. When he finally does sit, a phantom weight depressing the mattress next to her, it’s with a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m sorry I’m so… I’ve just never done this before and had it go well.”

Julie cares about all of the guys equally, worries about them and wants the best for them, but there’s some property of Alex’s gentleness and fragility that raises a protective instinct in her that Luke and Reggie don’t. Alex just needs more protecting, maybe. The other guys do it, too, or they try. It’s just something about Alex.

So, taking that into account, hearing him say something so bleak so matter-of-factly is pretty heartbreaking.

Julie tries to channel Doctor Turner and her totally neutral, judgment-free statements. She always found it easier to answer those than questions. “Never?”

Alex shrugs, and he can’t possibly know how much that small, nonchalant gesture hurts her, because _he’s_ hurt and he thinks it’s no big deal. “Well, my parents didn’t kick me out or anything, but that was pretty much the only good thing about that conversation.”

“What about the band?” Julie has to ask. She can’t imagine either of them reacting badly, but they _had_ been teenage boys in the 90s. Death probably lets you forgive at lot of things. She doesn’t know if _she_ could forgive them, though.

Alex’s smile isn’t meant for Julie at all. It’s meant for a time and a group she was never a part of, and even though she’s right beside him, she feels like she doesn’t exist. It’s not the nicest feeling. “That wasn’t a coming out so much as more of a… ‘we weren’t going to say anything but if you keep staring at Bobby like that we won’t have to.’”

“Bobby? Really?”

“What’s wrong with Bobby?” Alex says, indignant. Then he seems to remember where and when they are, and who Bobby Wilson grew up to be. “Then, I mean. There’s a lot wrong with him now.”

“He just looked kind of… sickly. But I guess that’s the whole grunge thing, if you’re into that. Which you clearly were.”

Julie hopes, desperately, that she’s helping, that maybe seeing her treat it lightly will show Alex that he can too. She thinks maybe she sees him smile at that.

But then he lets out a frustrated cry of “how are you so _chill_ about this?” and they’re back to square one.

Julie loses her cool. Just a little bit.

“Because I just am? Because it’s not a huge deal and yeah, I did know, but it wasn’t my business and honestly I really didn’t care until you brought it up and I only care _now_ because you’re upset about it. I just... it's really fine."

It was too loud, too forceful, and Alex shrinks back, chastened. He almost looks like he’s about to apologize for having emotions again, but what he says instead is, “I know you're cool, and thank you for that. I just... I just don’t understand how it could not be a big deal.”

And... yeah. She was right, even though she didn’t want to be. Alex isn’t scared because he’s still shaking off 1990s ideas of sexuality, he really just… doesn’t know.

“Did nobody tell you what the future’s like?”

She tries to say it gently, to turn it into an apology for not understanding earlier what he needed to hear. Alex looks unconvinced.

“Who would I have talked to?”

“Your hot skater friend?” Maybe if she just keeps talking about it like it’s normal, he’ll start to figure it out on his own.

But instead of what she _wanted_ those words to accomplish, they just seem to make Alex deflate. he stares at his lap, a disappointed twist to his mouth. “I didn’t ask. I was afraid to.”

That’s actually probably a pretty reasonable fear, considering that Julie has no idea who this skater ghost is or when he died. But still – “why not me?”

She’s not mad he didn’t come to her, of course not. They barely know each other. But she does know the twenty-first century, and she could have walked him through how to google something, at least.

Alex picks his words carefully. It’s not to spare her feelings, Julie thinks; he just really doesn’t know what to say. “I wasn’t ever really in the closet. I mean, I never like, talked about it, and we kind of had to pretend I was straight for the band, but… you know, if people knew, they knew, and that was kind of whatever. Once my parents freaked about it the guys were sort of my only family, so it didn’t really matter what anyone else thought. Or that’s what I said. Like, I was scared, all the time, but fuck ‘em, right? Rock and roll.” He laughs nervously. “Uh, but, anyway. But now I’m here, and you’re – I mean, obviously you’ve got your own family, but we’re a band, so – what you think matters. To me.”

“So… you didn’t ask because you were afraid of my answer?” It doesn’t feel _great_ to know that Alex thought she might not be okay with him being gay, but okay, she gets it. No hard feelings.

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

And then there’s silence. Alex looks ready to bolt, but he hasn’t made any moves to stand up just yet. Not that he has to; he could poof out mid-sentence if he decided he couldn’t take it anymore. Julie doesn’t know what to say. She can’t think of anything else to do except – okay. Honesty deserves honesty, she guesses.

“Has anyone ever come out to you?”

Alex is immediately apologetic. “No. Does it suck? Sorry that you have to listen to me freaking out, I know you were trying to sleep and even if you said it wasn’t a problem I still just –“

Holy crap is he spiraling. Julie has no idea how to calm him down or make him understand that coming out is a _good_ thing, that people have come out to her before and it’s honestly a great feeling to know that someone trusts you with that. Or it normally is.

Stick with the plan, Julie. It’s a good plan. Just got to get him on the same page.

“Do you want to know something about me?”

“Sure, what?”

It’s kind of miraculous how quickly Alex reroutes. It’s painfully obvious he doesn’t want to be talking about this and he only even _started_ talking about it because he felt like he had to. It’s too bad they’re not done.

“When I was twelve, for like a couple months I had a _terrible_ crush on Flynn.” Julie laughs, a little, because as embarrassing as it is to remember, it was pretty funny in hindsight.

Alex’s eyes go wide. Honestly, she’d kind of thought it was obvious. Guess not. “But – you’re –“

“Coming out to you?”

Alex doesn’t laugh. He’s so in his head that Julie isn’t sure any of what she’s saying is making it through. “But what about that Nick kid at your school?”

Alex at his most puppy dog-eyed can rival even Luke, and that’s saying something. He just… doesn’t _get_ things, sometimes, until they’re pointed out to him. Julie thinks he’s too busy worrying that he’ll get it _wrong_ to ever come to a solid conclusion. And right now, he’s only just coming down from spinning out so hard he _ran away_ rather than have a very simple conversation with her. So she’ll give him a pass for that one.

Still, you’ve got to nip biphobia in the bud, even if you have to do it gently.

“I’m _positive_ they had bi people in the 90s.” Reggie, for one. Julie would bet her beloved microphone that that boy is going to realize something about himself in the near future. That could be… kind of yikes, honestly. Maybe she should start preparing for another one of these conversations.

Alex shakes his head, wonderingly, as if the existence of bi people is some great revelation to him when she _knows_ it’s not. Or maybe it’s just his general inability to believe that what’s she’s saying is really happening, is really true in the twenty-first century.

“And people are like… lots of people know this about you?” he says. Just to make sure he’s heard her correctly, probably.

“My friends do,” Julie says easily, neglecting to mention the fact that she doesn’t have a _ton_ of friends these days. But Carrie knows, which probably means Carrie’s friends know, which probably means Nick knows, and that kind of sucks but isn’t the worst thing that could happen, not like Alex thinks it would be. “I told Flynn as soon as I figured it out. Not the crush-when-I-was-twelve part; I’m saving that for my wedding toast.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex says. “Just – one more time, just to make sure I’ve heard you right – it’s fine? Like, really fine?”

 _There_ we go. Took him a while, but he got there.

“Julie?”

Her door swings open, the hallway light slanting into her room. Her dad is framed in the doorway.

Alex starts to rise, and Julie tries to keep him there with a hand on his arm, which of course goes right through. But he does sit down again, so she’s still going to count it as a victory. “What’s up, dad?”

“Well, it’s midnight on a school night, and I heard you talking to someone in your room, so I think _I_ should be the one asking what’s up,” her dad says, and even though his face is in shadow Julie knows he’s got that expectant _I’m-a-cool-parent-but-this-is-testing-my-patience_ look going on.

She thinks quick. “It’s one of the guys from my band, sorry. He didn’t realize what time it was for me.”

Her dad frowns. “It’s not the one who wears those ‘90s muscle tees, is it? I’m not sure I approve of you talking to that kid in bed at midnight.”

Oh, no. This is _so much worse_ than the conversation they were just having. So much worse. Although Alex does seem to think it’s funny, so that’s a silver lining, she guesses. Making him feel better at her expense. “No, dad. It’s the blonde one. Alex.” She hesitates. This is a last-ditch resort, and Alex might hate her for it, but it also might _work._ “He came out to me. And he’s kind of… not had great experiences with that, where he’s from, so I had to, you know. I tried to be supportive but I’m not sure it worked.”

Beside her, Alex snorts. Then he yelps and tries to scuttle backwards on the bed as her dad comes to sit in the exact spot where _he_ was sitting.

Julie’s dad holds his arms out for a hug, and Julie goes willingly. She feels kind of bad about it, because Alex probably needs a hug way more than she does, but, well, maybe she can accept the hug for him by proxy, or something. And she kind of needs a dad-hug, after all that. “I’m proud of you, Julie. That’s a tough situation to navigate, and I’m sure you did help. And you should tell that Alex kid from me that he’s lucky to have you as a friend. _And_ to stop calling you at midnight.”

“Will do, dad.”

Alex waits until her dad is gone to speak, which is thoughtful of him. “He knows too?” he asks, quietly, inching back towards her.

Julie nods. She doesn’t know how to tell him that her dad hugged her when she came out, too, or that he was proud of her for telling him. She doesn’t know how to say that coming out wasn’t easy, for her, but that it was alright in the end, because for Alex it _wasn’t._ Except, maybe, this time.

“Okay,” Alex says, finally. “I believe you. And, uh, thanks for telling me. Is that what you’re supposed to say?”

He’s not holding himself so stiff anymore, and when Julie pretends to shove him off the bed, he goes, flinging himself into a jumbled sprawl that might not be physically possible, technically, but it looks very artistic. And just like that, he’s back.

“Thank _you,_ ” Julie says. “Sorry it took me so long to realize you needed to hear that.”

“You really did know, huh?” Alex says, running a rueful hand through his hair to settle it back into place.

Julie winces. _Oops._ “Uh, yeah. Sorry. And your skater friend probably does too. When did he die?”

“Uh, the eighties? Early two thousands? Skater fashion is kind of eternal, turns out.”

Julie thinks that’s maybe not true, but Alex is the one who was actually around for the eighties, so she’s not going to argue it. The point _is_ that this guy’s not like, some greaser from the seventies or whenever. And he’s been around in the present for a while, probably.

“I feel like you could give it a shot. _And_ , as a bonus, if it goes well you get an actual hug.”

Alex mumbles something like _ideally more than that_ , and if he wasn’t already on the floor she would shove him again. “Don’t hook up in my garage.”

Once Alex has left – through the door, like a real person – Julie finally lets herself fall backwards onto the bed. That was maybe the hardest conversation she’s ever had, second only to _her_ coming out. But hey, Alex is happier now, _and_ she gets to introduce him to all the queer artists from the past twenty-five years. That’s gonna be _great._

**Author's Note:**

> I've become absolutely OBSESSED with JATP over the last like... 3 days, and I felt like I had to write this fic because idk who this Owen Joyner guy is but he is doing some phenomenal "I was a queer teen in the 1990s and I'm not sure what's okay now" acting.
> 
> Title is from "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls, who Alex FOR SURE listened to.


End file.
